1. The Lord will certainly have compassion on Jacob; he will again choose Israel as his special people and restore them to their land. Resident foreigners will join them and unite with the family of Jacob.
2. Nations will take them and bring them back to their own place. Then the family of Jacob will make foreigners their servants as they settle in the Lord’s land. They will make their captors captives and rule over the ones who oppressed them.
3. When the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and anxiety, and from the hard labor which you were made to perform,
4. you will taunt the king of Babylon with these words:“Look how the oppressor has met his end!Hostility has ceased!
5. The Lord has broken the club of the wicked,the scepter of rulers.
6. It furiously struck down nationswith unceasing blows.It angrily ruled over nations,oppressing them without restraint.
7. The whole earth rests and is quiet;they break into song.
8. The evergreens also rejoice over your demise, as do the cedars of Lebanon, singing,‘Since you fell asleep,no woodsman comes up to chop us down!’
9. Sheol below is stirred up about you,ready to meet you when you arrive.It rouses the spirits of the dead for you,all the former leaders of the earth;it makes all the former kings of the nationsrise from their thrones.
10. All of them respond to you, saying:‘You too have become weak like us!You have become just like us!
11. Your splendor has been brought down to Sheol,as well as the sound of your stringed instruments.You lie on a bed of maggots,with a blanket of worms over you.
12. Look how you have fallen from the sky,O shining one, son of the dawn!You have been cut down to the ground,O conqueror of the nations!
13. You said to yourself,“I will climb up to the sky.Above the stars of ElI will set up my throne.I will rule on the mountain of assemblyon the remote slopes of Zaphon.
14. I will climb up to the tops of the clouds;I will make myself like the Most High!”
15. But you were brought down to Sheol,to the remote slopes of the pit.